Growth performance and biochemical composition of Ruditapes decussatus (L.) spat fed on microalgal and wheatgerm flour diets
Introduction
The development of bivalve aquaculture would be greatly enhanced by the total, or even partial, replacement of live algal food by a cheap, easily handled food that has the same nutritive qualities as live food. In bivalve hatcheries, the feeding of spat, i.e., from metamorphosis until it reaches a length of 5–10 mm, accounts for the highest consumption of microalgae (Helm, 1990, Coutteau and Sorgeloos, 1992). It is at this stage of culturing that an alternative food source is therefore most needed.
A suitable alternative diet to that of live food for bivalves must meet the following requirements: particle size suitable for the filtration mechanism of these animals, stability within the culture system, digestibility, null toxicity and a biochemical composition that covers the nutritional needs of each species (Laing, 1989). In accordance with these criteria, and with greater or lesser success, experiments have been conducted with heterotrophically cultivated dry microalgae (Laing et al., 1990, Laing and Verdugo, 1991, Laing and Millican, 1991, Laing and Millican, 1992, Curatolo et al., 1993), yeasts (Epifanio, 1979a, Urban and Langdon, 1984, Nell, 1985), modified yeasts (Albentosa et al., 1989, Coutteau et al., 1991, Coutteau, 1992, Coutteau et al., 1994), microcapsules of different kinds (Gabbott et al., 1976, Langdon and Waldock, 1981, Jones et al., 1984, Langdon and Bolton, 1984, Langdon et al., 1985, Laing, 1987) or bacterial proteins (Nell and Wisely, 1983, Nell and Wisely, 1984, Doulliet and Langdon, 1993, Doulliet and Langdon, 1994). In spite of the large number of studies that have been carried out, no substitute has as yet been found for the totality of the live diet, although substitutions of 40–50% of the live diet have been described.
Another product used in alternative diets for bivalves has been cereal flours, which were first introduced in experiments in the 1960s with the American oyster Crassostrea virginica. In these initial studies (Haven, 1965, Gillespie et al., 1966, Ingle, 1967, Dunathan et al., 1969), flours were used to complement the natural food present in the untreated sea water where adult oysters were kept, in order to stimulate their sexual maturity. Cereal flours have also been used as ingredients of artificial diets when determining the nutritional requirements of different bivalve species (Castell and Trider, 1974, Trider and Castell, 1980, Langdon, 1983, Langdon and Siegfried, 1984, Urban and Langdon, 1984). All of these studies were carried out with adult specimens at the stage of sexual maturity or with juvenile specimens of much greater size than the spat used in our experiment. Other studies performed by our working group with spat as small as that used in the present experiment (Pérez-Camacho et al., 1998) have successfully replaced up to 50% of the daily food ration with cornflour.
In this study, wheatgerm flour is used as a substitute for live microalgae in differing proportions in growth diets for the spat of the little-neck clam, Ruditapes decussatus (L.). The microalga used is Isochrysis galbana, clone T-ISO. We compared biochemical composition of diets with those of R. decussatus and assessed performance of the diets based upon clam growth rates.
Section snippets
Spat
Experimental trials were carried out with R. decussatus spat obtained from broodstock conditioned at the Instituto Español de Oceanografı́a. Spawning induction, larval and postlarval cultures were performed following the methods described for this species by Pérez-Camacho et al. (1977). Experimental animals were selected from spat stocks with a mean live weight (LW) of 2.46±0.03 mg individual−1, an individual (ind) dry weight (DW) of 1.60±0.02 mg ind−1, an individual length of 2.10±0.20 mm and
Growth
Spat growth varied according to the diet supplied. Table 1 shows the weights, organic content and length of the spat fed on the different diets, as well as for the spat at the beginning of the experimental period. Fig. 1 gives the increase in weight and length for the spat fed on each of the diets in relation to their initial weight and length. The greatest growth was obtained by the spat fed on an exclusively microalgal diet (diet A), with a final dry weight of 14.09 mg ind−1. The spat fed on
Discussion
The results described above show that wheatgerm flour can be used as a partial substitute for phytoplankton in growth diets for the little-neck clam, R. decussatus.
The use of cereal flour as a food for bivalve molluscs was begun on an experimental basis as a complement to the natural food present in untreated seawater in which adult specimens were kept, for the purpose of favouring their sexual maturity (Haven, 1965, Gillespie et al., 1966, Ingle, 1967, Dunathan et al., 1969). Cereal flours
Acknowledgements
We thank C. Fernández Pena and H. Regueiro for their technical assistance in the microalgal and spat cultures, and L. Nieto and B. González for their assistance in the biochemical analyses. This study has been financed by CICYT-CSIC-IEO project AGF95-1003-C02.
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